Bellwoods
Semi Duplex

This project gave new life an existing two-unit semi-detached home near Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods Park that had a previously uninhabitable low-ceiling basement. The focus was predominately on the ground floor and basement unit for the homeowner’s own use, while the upper unit stayed as a rental. We carved lightwells from the front and rear yards, bringing daylight down to the new floor level of the underpinned basement. In the rear yard, an existing single-storey extension was removed to create a more welcoming outdoor patio. Each façade was reclad and reinsulated, with a lime slurry applied over the existing bricks to allow moisture to properly move through the wall. The mechanical system was upgraded to an energy efficient heat pump. The front façade was designed as an architecture of collage, harmonizing an existing wood Tuscan column and oriel window with a new porch, new stairs and modernist wood screen. Inside, the goal was to tie together the old elements from the home (intricate patterned hardwood floors, cove ceilings), with the client’s own highly curated and excellent mid-century modern furniture, plus some new natural materials and modern flourishes. A riff on a baroque architectural trick called an enfilade spatial sequence was designed on the ground floor and basement, lining up doorways, windows, lights, lightwells, and an interior kitchen wall opening on axis.

Laneway Workshop

In a post-pandemic environment, the homeowners, a professional couple, experienced changing lifestyles that led to several needs and wants. They needed a much better work from home office away from their basement to suit their now hybrid jobs several days a week. They needed a new garage to replace a crumbling shed dating from the 1920s. Avid road-warrior bicycle enthusiasts, they wanted a bike repair workbench area. They wanted spaces to store their children’s scooters and various household items, host birthday parties and barbeques, have a better backyard garden and outdoor seating area.

One half of the homeowner couple, an architect at a large Toronto firm and parent of young kids, had scant time with which to design and oversee the project, but still weighed in with design commentary much more than the average client. JC-A helped coalesce these varied goals into an elegant design vision with thorough details and attention to materials. We helped take the project through the design phase, through the Toronto Committee of Adjustment and through the detailed construction documentation + construction phases. It was a wonderful collaboration.

The Timberworks

Through its zoning by-law, Toronto prohibits non-residential uses in its vast network of laneways throughout its low-rise residential neighbourhoods. This means that no small professional service office, craft studio, store, bakery, or even a daycare are legally allowed without zoning exemptions, as of 2025 and for the many preceding decades.

Scorgie Planning was commissioned, through generous funding from the Neptis Foundation, to convene a study on what different building types and uses could occur on properties with laneway access. 6 Architecture practices were then asked to look at one of 6 common lot sizes, and to visualize a business type fronting onto a laneway. JC-A was given the narrowest of common property widths ~ 5m (16.5ft), to create a design for a cabinet and furniture maker shop. We think it would be just fine to live next to a place like this, and we hope you do too.

House at Trout Hollow

The homeowners of this wonderful property are the latest stewards of a house dating from 1856.

Constructed of heavy timber logs in true balloon framing from trees that likely stood on the site before settlement, the building is a real curiosity. Located next to the Trout Hollow Conservation Area, the home was constructed for the beloved aunt of a local soda water bottler, and was the sixth building in the future town. A factoid apropos of nothing directly relevant to the home, shortly after this, a young Scottish man by the name of John Muir spent time at Trout Hollow across the road from 1864-66. He would go on to emigrate to the United States, become that nations foremost naturalist, and later help found the American National Parks System and the Sierra Club. When at Trout Hollow, we like to think he dropped by from time to time for some soda water.

The home had additions and alterations over the subsequent 169 years, and as of 2024 was sorely in need of repairs. Layers of siding, plaster and paint had obscured the original structure. The floors tilted wildly, the home was frigid in the winter, had no cooling in the summer, and leaked like a sieve. Small windows barely opened out to the beautiful yard. While quite charming, the home was lacking for the needs of a young family with two adolescent boys. Helping the homeowners renovate for the next century will involve structural stabilizing, re-cladding the siding, re-insulating, new enlarged windows, new roofing, new kitchen, bathrooms, heat pump, new deck, a great work-from-home office, new landscaping and a small addition.

Cambridge
Fourplex

Designed for a small-scale developer with a genuine presence in the local community, this multiplex rental housing added much-needed, modest density to a beloved old neighbourhood in a mid-size Ontario city. Costs were kept affordable by using wood stick frame construction along with clapboard siding, brick cladding, and conventionally sized, catalogue-ordered windows and doors. The arrangement of the materials was intended to echo the traditional 19th/20th c. North American siding and brick homes nearby, but reimagined in a contemporary, expressive way that feels both familiar and fresh. The layout of the units embraces a progressive spirit. Two 3-bedroom and two 2-bedroom units offer welcoming spaces for families and university students alike. Each unit was designed with generous outdoor walk-out space, whether at ground level or on terraces. Upending the usual custom of tucking secondary suites into basements, the 2-bedroom suites were placed on the upper level instead, while the larger suites comfortably share the basement and ground floor. Lightwells to basement bedrooms and recreation areas fill the interior with natural daylight and open views to the thoughtfully designed landscape spaces beyond.